A monster most every weekday. Three adventure seeds a post.
Because Pathfinder and 3.5 are more fun than work.
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Monday, March 7, 2016

Corpse Lotus

The corpse flower is a real thing, as many of you know
(because you are on the Internet and the Internet thinks science is neat).So if you’re a game designer, you don’t leave
a name like that just lying around.You
turn it into a plant monster—the corpse lotus—and set it loose on the
battlefields of countless worlds.

The first trick in fighting a corpse lotus is spotting it in
advance—it tends to resemble the local greenery and has the Camouflage (Ex)
ability besides.Then you have to watch out
for its vines, which pack all the punch of a full-grown Audrey II.And you have to watch out it doesn’t swallow
any corpses—or your friends—because it can gulp down and digest them as fast as
a carnivorous plant in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon for a fast
healing boon.(And since these things
tend to crop up amid battlefields and are pretty good at hunting prey on their
own, chances are they’ve got a corpse handy even if none of your PCs
volunteer.)

Unless your PCs are specifically hunting for alchemical
components (corpse lotuses produce a mist that mimics the gentle repose spell, making them a good choice for various oils and
tinctures), a corpse lotus is always going to be a side encounter, never the
Big Bad.But they might move the plot
forward in some interesting ways.Bodies
preserved by a corpse lotus’s mists last indefinitely, which can allow PCs more
time to raise an important NPC, speak with dead, or otherwise find
evidence or personal keepsakes that would otherwise be lost to decay.

Adventurers want to
travel to the lower reaches of the Delve.But there’s an obstacle: the winter grounds of an orc horde.Rather than engage in conflict and rouse the
ire of the horde, the adventurers plan to sneak through the settlement
disguised as corpse collectors (or as the corpses riding the wagons).After snaking through the horde, the
adventurers then discover why these otherwise filthy orcs are so meticulous
about gathering up their dead. The
corpses are dumped into a shallow ravine filled with corpse flowers, protecting
the horde’s rear flank from monstrous threats below.

Unable to defeat a
red dragon in combat, a smaller blue dragon sows corpse lotus seeds
throughout his territory.She hopes that
when he wakes from his long hibernation, the plants will have taken root and
driven off much of his game, forcing him into territories guarded by other
dragons or obstreperous humans.Adventurers may become involved when the corpse lotuses spread into
their holdings, or because rare attacks by the ferocious red, though horrific,
are to be preferred over the systematic dominance of a blue dragon suzerain and
her minions.

At a peace treaty,
the losing general promises to cover the graves of the fallen in crimson
flowers as a monument to the spilt blood on both sides.True to his word, he plants the flowers…but
they are corpse lotuses.The plant
monsters quickly grow fat on the still-to-be-interred dead, just as the bitter
general intended.

—Pathfinder Adventure Path #78 84–85 & Pathfinder
Bestiary 5 60

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today.Woo!(The real birthday is of course in June.)

By the way, please forgive the occasional typos. I am aware of them, but disagreements between MS Word and the Blogger template make my entries nearly impossible to edit once posted. I blame gremlins. You can find a more polished version of this blog over on Tumblr.